Tony Bates, CEO of Skype, has gone on YouTube to apologies to users for the outage over the last few days and to explain what actions the company is taking to ensure the situation never happens again.
Thanking users for their patience and continuing to use Skypes service Tony said that useage is back up to around 80% of normal traffic volumes using Skype.
Importantly Skype have determined the cause of so many clients crashing and have been able to mitigate the risk of it happening again
Tony promised that Skype will in the next few weeks send Skype credit vouchers worth 30 minutes of free calling to landlines anywhere in the world to their pre-pay and pay-as-you-go customers. They will also give an extra weeks credit to all subscription customers.
Tony acknowledged that the vouchers can’t make up for the service outage, but it’s great to see a company doing their best to make amends. Whilst it may have been an annoyance the fact that so many users are already logged back on shows that Skype is simply too good an application not to be used.
The last major outage of Skype was for 24 hours in August 2007.
4 Responses
Wow, Brian McBride from Amazon could take some lessons there from Tony Bates. I blogged this a few days back:
https://lastdropofink.co.uk/market-places/amazon/from-amazon-md-brian-mcbride-information-about-your-christmas-order/
Where an apology would have been nice. I’m not entirely sure on the hoody and the start image is a bit ropey (you can choose different slides in YT), but hey, it appears sincere and includes bribery.
Matt
PS, Chris, ‘Tonly acknowledged’
So, what should we do the next time Skype goes down? Resort to communicating, like, face to face or something?
The important thing here is the quantum change in Skype’s approach to customer service compared to the standard eBay Inc (now only a minority owner) mode. i.e. Ignore the customer and routinely deny or dismiss that there is or was any issue.
Skype have acknowledged there is an issue,they have explained in plausible terms why there is an issue and there is a firm promise of restitution.
I would bet the hoody is calculated to portray him as the common man, one of us not a stinking shiny bum elite.